It was 20 years ago today that the most famous car chase in American history captivated our attention.

On June 17, 1994, the nation watched as the L.A.P.D. chased a white Ford Bronco along the Los Angeles freeways at a show-stopping 35 miles per hour. Of course, the driver of that Bronco was one Orenthal James "O.J." Simpson, a Hall of Fame football player suspected in the grisly murder of his ex-wife and her friend.

"The Chase" was a ratings bonanza, with an estimated 95 millions Americans glued to their televisions that Friday evening. How could another former football player with his own checkered history not want to get in on that kind of free publicity?

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Imagine yourself as one of thousands wading ashore in the pre-dawn twilight amid a barrage of opposition gunfire and explosions designed to ensure you never set foot on dry land again. Why would you do this? Only to ensure the future of the free world!

Seventy years ago today, men did just that when the Allies enacted Operation Overlord, better known as the D-Day invasion of Normandy in World War II. Those men didn't have impenetrable force fields, flight rings, or wrist lasers, just the iron determination to free Europe from Axis aggression. That's the making of true heroes.

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We all know the world's first space station was the original Justice League Satellite headquarters which began operation in 1970. This was followed by the Soviet Union's Salyut I in 1971 and eventually the United States' Skylab, which launched on this date in 1973.

Skylab was the first non-Justice League space station to successfully change crews, although the station was permanently abandoned by the end of 1974. For 5 years, the station floated unlocked about 270 miles above the Earth before finally falling into the Australian Outback in 1979. (For reference, the Justice League Satellite orbited at 23,300 miles, almost a tenth of the way to the moon!)

Of course, by the year 2442, space stations will be old news. The average citizen will be familiar with several alien species, have robot valets, and travel to school in flying school buses. To a man from the future, the launch of a liquid-fueled antique rocket might be a nostalgic tourist experience.

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Thirty-five years ago today, there was a malfunction in the brand new number 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Middleton, Pennsylvania. For several days afterwards, the world held its breath as it waited to see if the hydrogen gas within the reactor would explode and rain radioactive material on the eastern coast of America.

The official report by the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) eventually blamed the situation on operator error. However, eyewitness reports credited the quick actions of a mysterious, gold-clad hero with beating back the real cause of the meltdown: a radiation-absorbing creature from another dimension.

In the aftermath of the meltdown, the NRC made sweeping changes to prevent a recurrence of the problem. They appear to have worked. In the thirty-five years since, not once has a giant radiation-absorbing creature attacked an American nuclear power station. We'll keep our fingers crossed, just to be safe.

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Today, Vincent van Gogh is one of the most recognized and popular artists on Earth. What makes him so enduring? Is it his colorful, expressionist style? His warped landscapes? His hauntingly lonely self-portraits? Or is it the mysterious man himself?

Historians tell us that van Gogh suffered from depression. One hundred twenty-five years ago today, he cut off part of his own ear. That doesn't sound like the act of a happy person, does it? Could his mood have been improved if he had known that one day he would take his place among the greatest painters of all time? Only a time traveler would ever know.

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